


Mercy

by Breathing2nd



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Technology, Aliens, Bounty Hunters, F/M, Future, Gen, Guns, Multi, New Planets, Other, Outer Space, Saving the World, Space Stations, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 11:15:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5288618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Breathing2nd/pseuds/Breathing2nd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is just static in my ear and silence in my head. They’re all dead. I know it. I didn’t at the time, but true life has a way of influencing dreams. I’m running; legs pumping until the muscles are screaming, burning, but it’s not fast enough. It will never be fast enough. I know with certainty as the doors slide apart that I’m too late, but each time it’s as if I witness another second of that moment.</p><p>The sky tearing open, like some great hands just pried it apart. That glimpse into blackness so deep and pure that I’m frozen in its wake. I see them running but there is no escape. The last thing I hear is their screams and that noise…like a tornado ripping through sheet metal. There is a heartbeat where there is nothing. No sound. Like the world is holding its breath. I can’t believe the light can be so blinding when it comes to swallow the world and everything is bathed in fire. I feel the heat as it slams into me and I am weightless for a moment. My shields are torn apart and my helmet cracks and splinters just before the glass implodes altogether. My cheeks sting as glass cuts into flesh and that liquid flame pours into the corridor.</p><p>“Mercy…”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> Another original work. I'll say that I was inspired by Mass Effect, though. Who isn't, lol. Feedback is appreciated, let me know if you'd like to see more, though, this one is not finished.

The dream is always the same. It’s more of a nightmare really. I’m running through that damned corridor; the smell of singed hair and fresh blood is so thick, even my air filters can’t mask it and I feel like I’m suffocating. I want to rip this damned helmet off even though I know that would be a stupid idea, but damnit, I can’t hear him anymore!

There is just static in my ear and silence in my head. They’re all dead. I know it. I didn’t at the time, but true life has a way of influencing dreams. I’m running; legs pumping until the muscles are screaming, burning, but it’s not fast enough. It will never be fast enough. I know with certainty as the doors slide apart that I’m too late, but each time it’s as if I witness another second of that moment.

The sky tearing open, like some great hands just pried it apart. That glimpse into blackness so deep and pure that I’m frozen in its wake. I see them running but there is no escape. The last thing I hear is their screams and that noise…like a tornado ripping through sheet metal. There is a heartbeat where there is nothing. No sound. Like the world is holding its breath. I can’t believe the light can be so blinding when it comes to swallow the world and everything is bathed in fire. I feel the heat as it slams into me and I am weightless for a moment. My shields are torn apart and my helmet cracks and splinters just before the glass implodes altogether. My cheeks sting as glass cuts into flesh and that liquid flame pours into the corridor.

“ _Mercy…_ ” I hear his voice whispering through my mind. It’s weak, almost indistinguishable. Somehow, my subconscious reminds me that it can’t be real. He would have called me something else but I can feel the pain in those two little syllables. He’s not begging…he’s just calling out to _me_. The last time I’ll ever hear him inside my thoughts. The last time I’ll ever hear him again…

 

***                     

 

“Mercy? Mercy! You alive down there? We’re about to dock.” Nym’s voice crackled through the intercom inside my room. I wanted to tell her no, I’m not alive. I haven’t been in almost three years. Not since that day. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel alive again.

“Yeah, yeah, be right there.” I muttered, rolling off the stiff leather cushion of the chaise in my quarters and onto my feet. I smoothed out the wrinkles in my clothes and made for the door. It slid apart with an audible hiss and I yawned sleepily as I walked out, nearly careening into the chest of Jeden.

Even by Seidem standards, he was tall. The tips of his ears peaked at just under seven feet, though you’d have never know it unless he actually stood up straight. Seidem had a tendency to walk with a bit of a curl to their spine so that they were almost always in a sort of fighting stance. Or maybe that’s just what a big ass cat would look like if you stood him on two legs.

“Ah, there you are, Mercy.” He almost purred my name and I could feel it reverberating from somewhere deep in that sturdy chest of his. I looked up, but didn’t take a step back. I didn’t get into Jeden’s way; he got into mine.

“Here I am, Jeden. What do you want?” I sighed, not even wanting to know really. Jeden’s expression was hard to read, but then, most aliens didn’t make the same sort of expressions as humans did. Seidem, though, were just enough humanoid, that if you could read a dog’s expression, you just might be able to read a Seidem’s. Not that they looked like dogs, but they had more expression than their feline features would have led you to believe.

He seemed almost thoughtful before taking a step back to look at me a little more squarely. “I had hoped we might discuss your plans for the delivery of our bounty to its collector.” Every time he pronounced an R it rolled off his tongue and over my body. Despite being a seven foot assassin who could cut off the head of a gnat with his tail blade, his voice was incredibly sensual. Part of me always wondered if that was just the nano-translator chip interpreting the lower tones of his voice that way, or if I was just being partial.

Without him being so close I could actually see his face. He had his usual shroud down so that his mouth and ears were unceremoniously exposed. Usually, Jeden kept nearly his entire head hidden beneath carefully draped layers of fabric until the only thing visible were his eyes. It added to his overall _I’m a mysterious and deadly assassin_ persona, and his eyes being a pure, clear red helped too.

The eyes, he had told me once, were are rare trait among Seidem. According to Jeden, his colorings were actually considered a mark of the gods. He never made it seem like that was a good thing, though.

Jeden was actually the first Seidem I had ever met, and for all I had known, all the large cat creatures could have looked identical to the one standing in front of me. Since meeting him, however, I had seen dozens of other Seidem and never once had any of them had red eyes or black hair. They seemed a warm hued people; all caramels and gold with clay and emerald sprinkled in for color. They looked like the desert creatures they were, but Jeden looked all together something else.

“What’s to discuss?” I asked indignantly. “It’s the usual drop off routine. Get in, make the trade, get paid, get out.” I shrugged, flicking a bit of lint from my pants.

“Yes, but the delivery is to be made to a Singari, no?” I nodded and felt the smirk forming along my lips. I could see where this was going. “You are always prepared, Mercy and we are often instructed to a plan B before we enter into a mission.”

“You’re right, Jeden. Thing is, we’re already going in on plan B for this one.” I only noticed the slight twitch of confusion on Jeden’s face because, of all my crew, aside from Nym, he had been with me the longest. It gave me an edge in seeing the slight nuances on such an alien face. With Jeden, especially, it all came down to the tiniest changes around his eyes, since most everything else was usually covered. “You know Singari can’t be trusted just as much as I do, and I’ll be damned if I let one screw me over out here where even _they_ don’t hold power.” Again, it was that slight twitch around his eyes that let me know he liked what he’d heard.

_“That freedom running in your vain, under the pressure and the pain. You're getting just as cold as ice. Like you'd get seven with one dice.”_

“Are you calling me cocky, Jeden?” I was smiling now and the seven foot cat-monster returned my upturning of lips with a spread of his own wide mouth to reveal twin rows of dainty, razor sharp fangs. His version of a smile was a bit more intimidating, but a smile none the less. At least, if you knew what you were looking at.

I always wondered what the original pioneers must have thought when they met these new alien races and found they weren’t all that different from them. History says Human’s had wild fantasies about what extraterrestrials would be like. Some believed them to be little green men, others scrawny limbed bipeds with overly large craniums and fathomless black eyes, and other’s still had this depressing notion that humanity was alone in the galaxy.

Just as Earth is rich in its variety of life, both sentient and not, so is the vast expanse of the galaxy. I think humans thought they might have been the first to understand concepts of art and music, but those concepts were never exclusive to humanity. Still, even I, someone born almost two hundred years after the first human had landed on Earth’s only moon, found it a little fascinating whenever an alien spouted off poetry.

“I said nothing of the sort, Mercy.” He purred and I allowed myself at least a small chuckle.

“C’mon, I’ll go over it with you and Ted in the cargo bay.”


End file.
